Biophilia as an adaptive approach to climate change. A qualitative study with interviews in North, Central and Southern Italy

Abstract

Climate change increasingly evident, such as global warming, floods and droughts, but also as new epidemics, affects the entire planet living system. From an anthropocentric approach that is in fact devastating and irreversible on several fronts, humanity must rediscover a synergy, a holistic approach that we can call "biophilic approach" where, starting from every individual aware of his influence, even if minimal but decisive (effect butterfly by Edward Lorenz), the entire human society, in its local and global organizational expressions, must find a proactive adaptation that cannot be delegated to nature itself through the biological mechanisms of the evolution of the species. In fact, the extinction of many animal species shows us that the times of anthropocentric development do not coincide with the biological times of the species' adaptation to climate change. The purpose of this study is to identify a paradigm shift, which involves a subversion of the mechanism of natural adaptation, focusing on what are already the "lost games" with the planet, the non-renewable resources being depleted, the ecosystems compromised, and how much and how a biophilic approach can influence a new synergistic adaptation between the human component and the others, to find a balance on the residual capacities of coexistence and survival of the entire planetary system.